For everyone who ’s ever been infelicitous with the way they expect in a photo or on TV , there ’s almost always someone there to judge and comfort them by level out that the television camera “ adds ten pounds ” to its subjects .
Sometimes this just explain actual flabbiness , but some people swear up and down that the phenomenon is real and tv camera really fatten us up . What ’s going on ?
Flash Problems
A few different things , one but being the way the study is shot . Strong , matt light directed straight at a mortal — like from a sorry lighting frame-up or the camera ’s split second — flatten the features of a subject by drink down shadows . Those head - on shots of you at the family reunification look bad , in part , because your cousin-german ’s camera heartbeat flatten and fatten you .
The camera itself also shoulders some of the blame . Telephoto and wide-eyed angle lenses each distort an image in their own ways . No matter the type electron lens , though , there ’s also the trouble of a camera bear just one of them .
Seeing in Stereo
Most of us attend at the world through two eyes , and our genius take what we see with each one and fuse it into a single figure of speech , which allows us to comprehend depth . With only one middle — its lens — a television camera lacks our accurate depth perception . Unless the photographercreatessome illusion of profoundness by using distance cues , tripping , and overshadow , or by composing their injection in sure ways , the deficiency of it crap their photos and subject add up out looking flatter than they really are , which also makes them seem wider .
Another difference between a two - eyed panorama of the world and a one - eyed view that factors in is the way they capture the desktop behind the subject . Background feature cover from one middle can be seen by its partner , and together they conquer overlapping views that a single eye or camera ca n’t . This means that a single center has a different perception of the width of the capable relative to the setting than two centre working together .
Michael Richmond , a physical science professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology , illustratesthis essence with a few photos of a coffee physiognomy against a patterned background mainsheet . He took one photo straight on like the lone eye of a camera would see it , one photo four cm to the left of center the style your leftover optic would see it if your nose was flat at the center and one photograph four centimeters to the right of center the fashion your right optic would see it . He then meld the perspectives of the latter two “ eyes ” by cutting both those pic through the center of the mug and fusing the right side of the right heart ’s flick with the left side of the leftover heart ’s picture to get something like what the brain would create .
In both pictures , the mug is the same number of picture element across , but there ’s a huge difference in the way the camera view and the combined “ two - eyed ” opinion captivate the backcloth . In the camera aspect , background appears narrow , and the mug looks much “ fatter ” against it .
